Coastal Archaeology Under Climate Threat: Purbeck and Studland

Our Pastronauts identified 2,887 heritage features across the Purbeck and Studland coastline – a 367% increase on the 767 previously held in the National Trust’s Historic Buildings, Sites and Monuments Record. For a landscape being actively reshaped by erosion, that’s not just an impressive number, but a record of things that may not survive long enough to be counted any other way.

42% of participants reported stronger bonds with their home landscapes, and 71% developed enhanced connections to Purbeck and Studland specifically – remarkable given that most were mapping remotely from around the world.

The citizen-generated data achieved an average accuracy score of 87.34%, an improvement on the existing record’s 83.2%, and the improvement appeared across the whole dataset, and not just in the best examples.

743 Pastronauts completed training from a pool of 1,040 applicants spanning 31 countries. The community was diverse in age, gender, and background – many with no prior experience of archaeology. This was Deep Time’s most international cohort, demonstrating that meaningful heritage work can happen anywhere with the right tools and training.

The validated dataset was shared with the National Trust to inform how they manage the Purbeck and Studland coastline going forward. For a landscape being actively reshaped by erosion, having a detailed record of what exists now is genuinely valuable for documenting features that may not survive the next few decades, as the shoreline continues to change.